


The Rising and Setting of the Sun

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Good Hunting [5]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1, Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-11
Updated: 2016-10-11
Packaged: 2018-08-21 23:20:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8264195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: Written for the comment_fic prompt: 'Any, any, "Is this the helpdesk? I need help' and the 2016 Shoobie Monster Fest.John Sheppard and the intrepid team of hunters get an emergency call from Miko's family to investigate something in Japantown. It ends up being legendary, but not the way they think.





	

“Is this the helpdesk? I need help.”

Lorne chuckled, and ordinarily John would have been glad to hear Lorne sounding light-hearted again, because Lorne in shades of grey with one eye, silent and efficient like a ghostly butler, had just about been more terrifying than when Lorne was insane and half-naked and yanking out his own glass eye. “Yes, this is the help desk. How can I help you, Major Sheppard?”

“I’m running through Japantown with a sword in hand, looking like a serious Comic Con reject, and I’m trying to track down a dragon who, if I’m not mistaken, just kidnapped Miko.”

The levity vanished from Lorne’s tone. “I have a lock on your location. When was the last time you had a twenty on Miko?”

“Three seconds ago. There’s a tea house up ahead. I’m going in after her.”

“Roger that. I’ll send the Winchesters to watch your six.”

“Stay with me, Lorne.”

“I’d never leave you, Sheppard.”

It would have been romantic if it wasn’t ridiculous. John had to pause and sheath his sword, which looked a lot easier in movies than it was in real life (or maybe he just didn’t have enough practice), and then he drew his overcoat closed over the sword and attempted to look as nonchalant as possible as he stepped into the tea house. He’d been stationed in Japan for six months back when he was still a butter bar lieutenant, so he knew to take off his shoes. He ducked his chin down into his collar, which caused several lovely women in simple kimonos to bow slightly at him.

“Do you have a lock on Miko?” he asked Lorne.

“Looks like you’re right on top of her,” Lorne murmured. “I’m not good enough at hacking to re-task a satellite to get a more pinpoint location. Doc? McKay? Could you -”

Voices exploded behind John.

“No, Dean, you have to take off your shoes.”

“We have to rescue Miko!”

“ _Chotto matte kudasai! Matte, matte!_ ”

More women in kimonos headed for the front door. As soon as they were out of sight, John broke into a run. He slid open every single door he passed, fumbling broken apologies ( _Gomen, gomen_ ) whenever he interrupted a legitimate tea party.

He’d just busted up a fairly intimate encounter over sake and mochi when he finally found Miko. He shoved open the door and drew his sword - and stared.

“Shh, it’s all right,” Miko was saying softly. She was holding a man in her arms, swaying gently, stroking his hair with one hand. Tears streamed down her face, but she was smiling.

There was a bamboo knife buried in the man’s back.

The man pressed his forehead to Miko’s, gasping, blood flecking his lips, but he was smiling, and he said, “Thank you.”  


*

_Twenty-four hours earlier…_

“Cannibalism is something regular humans do, though, right?” John asked. He, Sam, Dean, and Lorne were packing up the bus with the equipment needed for their next hunt, which was concerns of ritual cannibalism in North Carolina.

“That’s assuming the eaters are human. Could be vampires or werewolves. We won’t know more till we see the bodies of the victims,” Sam said.

“But the reports are that it’s cannibalism, so the authorities think it’s humans,” John said.

“The authorities always think it’s humans.” Dean’s gaze went distant. “And sometimes it really is humans. That just makes it worse, though.”

“How?” John and Lorne heaved a large steel crate into the cargo compartment of the bus.

“Vampires need blood like we need air. Werewolves need human organs like we need water,” Dean said. “Humans don’t need to eat other humans.”

“Unless they have a mental illness -” Sam began.

Dean leveled him with a glare. “Humans don’t need to eat other humans.”

Sam looked away from him, and a muscle jumped in his jaw. Had Sam been friends with a cannibal or something?

Lorne, wearing a pinstriped dark suit with a grey waistcoat and a black tie, packed several crates of portable instruments and generators into the bottom of the bus. “The other concern, of course, is that ritualistic cannibalism may be a sign of witchcraft. Many witches’ spells involve human body parts.”

“What’s the difference between you and a witch?” John asked.

Lorne froze. Sam and Dean froze.

“I mean, obviously you’re not a woman,” John said hastily. “Just - you can do magic.”

“Male witches are sometimes called warlocks.” Lorne turned away and began compulsively straightening the cases full of Miko’s precious microscopes. He was still wearing his eye patch. How did one go about getting a replacement glass eye, anyway? “Most witches gain their power by borrowing it from demons - and thus make demon deals. Fewer witches are natural wielders of magic. Fewer still learn magic through great study. Men of Letters, like my grandfather and Sam and Dean’s, do learn magic as well as lore, and could conceivably be considered studied witches, but most witches use their magic for personal gain, for harming others. White witches are rare, but they exist, and we respect them and let them be. Unlike witches, whose identities and livelihoods and lives are magic, we hunters and Men of Letters use magic as one tool of many.”

“And we don’t do cannibalism,” Dean added.

“I hadn’t realized that this hunting thing was...genetic,” John said finally.

Dean smiled, the expression brittle. “Saving people, hunting things. The family business.”

Lorne glanced at John out of the corner of his eye. “Your ability to See the supernatural is genetic.”

John swallowed. “Right.” He really didn’t want to talk about it.

“I’m sure Rodney will tell you,” Lorne continued.

“Tell John what?” Rodney rounded the corner, carrying a crate of tools.

“That magic and the supernatural are just science we don’t understand yet,” Lorne said.

“Exactly.” Rodney handed the crate to Lorne, who set it on a workbench and rearranged its contents before putting it into the bus. “Everything that seems magical - your ability to See, Lorne’s magic, Sam’s unnatural height - is actually science. And I’m studying it.”

“Hey,” Sam protested, but Dean laughed and called him _Moose_.

“Anything else, Doc?” Lorne asked.

“Apart from our personal effects, that should be everything,” Rodney said. “If you need me, I’ll be in the music room.” He turned and swept back out of the garage.

“Music room?” John asked.

“I keep my guitar in my room,” Dean said, “but Moose keeps his cello in the music room.”

John raised his eyebrows at Sam. “You play the cello?”

“One of our interns was teaching me,” Sam said, and Dean’s gaze went shadowed. “So I play, when I can. Do you play a musical instrument?”

“Guitar, actually. But I left mine in storage. I didn’t think I’d have room for it here. They weren’t very descriptive when they told me about this posting,” John said.

Dean clapped him on the shoulder. “You can borrow mine till you send for yours.”

“Thanks,” John said.

“I can send for any of your personal effects,” Lorne said.

Sam nodded. “You want him to do it. They respond to him faster even though it’s our stuff.”

“Do you use magic on them?” John asked.

“No need.” Lorne’s smile was enigmatic.

John glanced in the direction Rodney had gone. “What does he play?”

“Piano. But never when anyone can listen. And never interrupt him,” Lorne said. “It’s why he tells us he’s in there. So we know to stay away.”

“Is he any good?” John asked.

Sam and Dean shrugged.

Lorne said, wistfully, “The best.”

John was in his room packing a week’s worth of clothes when Miko came tearing down the hall, shouting for Lorne.

John didn’t hesitate. He drew his gun and followed. Miko rounded the corner - she moved fast for being as short as she was - and skidded into Lorne’s room.

Lorne had his hands on Miko’s shoulders, trying to calm her, while she stammered.

“Say that again? Take a deep breath, Miko.”

Miko did. “I just received a call from my sister. There’s an emergency back home. We need to go, now?”

“We?” Lorne echoed. “Why?”

Miko stumbled through a tale of microbursts in Japantown in San Francisco, overturning cars and injuring people, and also localized time dilation effects centered around a certain section of Japantown.

“Time dilation?” Lorne asked.

Miko nodded frantically.

Lorne reached into his pocket, drew out his cell phone, hit speed dial. “McKay, we need to take a detour before we go to Raleigh. Two words: time dilation.”

“Thank you, thank you,” Miko babbled.

Lorne leaned in, pressed a kiss to her hair, and she sucked in another breath, calmed. “We’ll take care of it, Miko. Now go. Grab some beach gear.”

Were Miko and Lorne dating? But Miko whirled around and dashed away.

“What’s so special about time dilation?” John asked.

Lorne held out his right hand, showed John his ring, the one with the six-pointed star he saw on so many files and folders and other things around the bunker. “Time dilation is one of the many technologies legendarily belonging to the people of Atlantis,” he said. “This star, the Aquarian Star, is purported to have been on the gates of Atlantis. Rodney’s dedicated his entire life to finding Atlantis.”

“How does he plan on doing that?” John had always known Atlantis as a legend, a debunked myth, but he had fought demons and aliens, so he was going to roll with this line of reasoning for as long as he needed to.

“The Men of Letters only have one piece of solid information about Atlantis that no one has ever been able to decipher,” Lorne said. “When the Men of Letters were almost completely wiped out in 1958, any way of deciphering the information was lost. There’s a lot of rumor and conjecture about what the people of Atlantis were capable of. Rodney hopes, if we can substantiate any of that information, we can find Atlantis.”

“Why Atlantis?” John asked.

“Because,” Rodney said, “it holds the key to the mysteries of the universe.” He had his suitcase in hand. “What are we waiting for? Let’s go.”  


*

John spent most of the bus ride to San Francisco reading everything Lorne could give him on Atlantis. Most of it was rumor, conjecture, legends of a beautiful city full of beautiful, strong, brilliant people, who were overthrown by their own hubris in a civil war, or their technology getting the better of them, or the gods punishing them for becoming too god-like. On Atlantis there was time dilation, teleportation, controlling the elements, making weapons, knowing the stars, advanced medicine, psychic powers, maybe even time travel. Lorne gave John an extensive volume on other lost lands, like Avalon, Mu, Lemuria, Shambhala, El Dorado, and the City of Enoch (which required reading the Book of Enoch and made John’s head spin).

Rodney and Miko spent most of the bus ride (when they weren’t either driving or navigating) on the phone to Miko’s sister Yuki, asking about the events she was witnessing, that led her to believe time dilation was going on. Yuki sent them measurements and videos of microbursts, and John and Sam were called upon to run calculations of how the time dilation ratios were working.

When Vala was driving and John was navigating, Vala told him that both Lorne and Miko had been raised in San Francisco, Miko as the daughter of an acclaimed physics professor at UCSF, Lorne on a hippie commune just outside the city, son of a single mother who taught art at a local high school.

“His sister’s a tattoo artist,” Vala said. “While we’re in town, you should pick up some basic ink.”

John glanced over his shoulder at Lorne, who was seated on the couch reading, and remembered the tattoos he’d seen on Lorne’s skin.

Vala followed his gaze and said, “I do mean basic. Anti-possession charm is a necessity. The rest is, as they say, gravy.”

“His mother was a hippie?” John asked.

“So he says.”

“Maybe it’ll do him good, to see his family.”

“I don’t know if he even talks to them,” Vala said. “He says little about his family. Same as everyone else, really.” She eyed John. “What’s your family like?”

“Complicated.”

“Mine’s all dead. For centuries, if not millennia. I try not to think about it too much.” Vala’s tone was deceptively light. “Is my exit coming up?”

John peered at the map on his phone. “Yes. In two miles.”

“Excellent. I hope we can get some good sushi while we’re here.”

“I’ll go get you some coffee,” John said. He plugged his phone into the radio so Vala could listen to the voice-guided navigation.

“Tea! I want tea.” Even though Vala wasn’t British, she’d claimed the nation as her own, affected its accent and culture. John usually found that kind of thing pretentious, but according to Sam, the country Vala was from didn’t exist anymore, had been wiped from the history books when Qetesh, the demon possessing her, went on a rampage, so she got to choose where she was from.

John rifled through the cabinets for tea bags and mugs. He didn’t mind tea, didn’t prefer it over coffee, but the right tea reminded him of his mother. He filled the electric kettle and plugged it in, leaned against the tiny kitchen stove, and waited.

Sam and Dean had joined the laptop party at the kitchen table, Dean crammed in beside Miko, Rodney opposite them, and Sam in the armchair across from them, because he never actually sat in the booth.

“I found something,” Dean said.

“What?” Rodney asked.

Dean pointed at his laptop screen. “This guy. He’s at the scene of every single microburst.”

Rodney peered over his shoulder. “How can you tell? They all look the same.”

Sam made a strangled noise, but Miko flapped her hand carelessly. “Oh please, he couldn’t tell you two apart either for the first three months.”

“This guy has red hair,” Dean said.

Rodney narrowed his eyes. “Huh. That cannot be natural. Miko, can Japanese people naturally have red hair?”

“Not full-blooded Japanese people,” Miko said, “absent some genetic aberration.” She also peered at Dean’s laptop. “But that hair color isn’t natural on anyone, Japanese or otherwise.”

“Every single microburst, you say?” Sam asked.

Dean nodded. “Every single video Miko’s sister sent, at any rate.”

Lorne set aside his Kindle and rose up. “Is there any indication that he’s wielding magic or using a device or -?”

“No. He’s just hanging around in the crowd,” Dean said.

“Could be he just has really bad luck,” Sam said, “like that guy who was in both cities that got hit with A-bombs.”

“Japantown isn’t that big,” Miko admitted. “There could be dozens of other people who were also at every single microburst.”

“Run it through facial recognition,” Rodney said, “and let’s find out.”  


*

Yuki Kusanagi Saito was the head chef at one of the swankiest sushi restaurants in town, so Vala got her good sushi while everyone crammed into Yuki’s apartment (her wife was at work and her children were at school) and interviewed her some more. Between Dean, Rodney, and Miko’s computer hacking skills and Lorne’s artistic skills, they’d determined that the unnatural redhead was indeed the only person at every single microburst, and they had a composite sketch of the suspect.

Like the last suspect they’d dealt with, the suspect was suspiciously good-looking.

Dean said, “You’re not going to be kissing this one, are you, Lorne?”

Sam elbowed him hard. Lorne said nothing. He’d said little for most of the drive, and little to Yuki, other than to thank her for the food and tea.

“I’ll run the sketch through the usual databases,” Dean said, ducking his head, and accepted Lorne’s sketch to run it through the scanner.

“I didn’t know who else to ask for help,” Yuki said, sitting on a cushion on the floor beside Miko, who had an arm around her shoulders and was hugging her. “The national weather service and the national guard are saying that clocks and cell phones are being affected by changes in magnetism caused by the microbursts, but I know it’s not true. It’s not right. Microbursts wouldn’t cause the sun to set and rise three times in an hour, _imouto_.”

Miko nodded. “I know. You did the right thing.”

“Can you fix it? Can you make it stop?” Yuki asked.

It was Sam who knelt beside Yuki and assured her, in perfectly sincere tones, that they would figure things out and get things back to normal.

Vala, poking on her phone, found video of the multiple sunrises and sunsets. John and Sam’s calculations had yielded unhelpful results. The time dilation effect wasn’t consistent at all. Some locales only had a few minutes or hours of time dilation, others had days. It made no sense.

“There he is again,” Vala said. “The man with the red hair.”

“Can you zoom in?” John asked.

Vala nodded, fiddled with the screen, and then she turned on one of the tablets, pushed the image from her phone onto the tablet.

“Look,” John said. “He’s wearing a pearl necklace.”

Dean hummed the melody of the song absently.

Sam, without missing a beat, reached out and smacked him on the leg. “Stop it. We’re on the job.”

Dean blinked. “What? Oh. I was just humming. Besides, Sheppard said it, not me.”

“He’s wearing a pretty big pearl on a piece of cord around his throat,” John said.

“That’s weird for a guy to wear,” Rodney murmured, and John handed him the tablet.

“Pearl?” Miko echoed.

Rodney angled the tablet so she could see. She rose up, crossed the room, and knelt beside Rodney so she could get a closer look.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh dear. I don’t think this is Atlantean at all.”

“What makes you say that?” Rodney asked.

Miko reached out, traced a finger down the image of the man’s face. “I think he’s a dragon.”

“I read about dragons,” Dean said. “They like to hoard treasure and kill virgins. Hey Lorne, can you still be dragon bait?”

“No,” Lorne said.

John blinked. Surely Dean was joking.

But Dean lifted his head, raised his eyebrows. “Really? When did that happen?”

“A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell,” Lorne said loftily.

“No,” Miko said, “an Asian dragon.” She glanced over her shoulder at her sister. “Come on. We need to take readings at the microburst scenes anyway.”

Rodney nodded. “Lorne, stay here with Yuki, keep that facial recognition search going. Sam, Dean, John, and Vala, take the microburst scenes. Miko, you’re with me.”

Sam divvied up the equipment each of them would need to take readings at each microburst scene while Miko divvied up the tech everyone would need to stay in contact with each other, and then they set off. While John walked to the site of the third microburst (there were seven in all, he’d been assigned one and three), he listened as Miko detailed her theory about why this was a dragon.

“The torch dragon has a human face,” Miko said, “and he creates seasonal winds by breathing, and the sun rises and sets with the opening and closing of his eyes.”

“Microbursts and time dilation.” Rodney sounded grim.

“So why is the dragon doing this?” Dean asked. “For kicks and giggles? To mess with the humans?”

“Sounds like dragon magic gone awry to me,” Sam said. “How do we stop a dragon?”

“By stealing its pearl.”

“Ah. The pearl necklace,” Dean said, and Sam made a disapproving noise.

“So how do we get close enough to a dragon to steal its pearl?” John asked. A woman walking past him cast him a strange look. He pointed to his bluetooth earpiece and mouthed _World of Warcraft_ , and the woman actually winked at him before passing on.

“Legend has it a brave warrior once tricked a dragon into giving up its pearl by telling it that the reflection of the moon on the surface of a pool was a bigger pearl,” Miko offered.

“How do we know asian dragons don’t like virgins as bait?” Dean asked. “Actual vampires are an amalgamation of a bunch of different mythological traditions, plus some things that appear nowhere in the typical literature. Why not dragons? How do we know that there isn’t a single species of dragon that share various traits?”

“Unless you know any virgins,” Rodney began.

“As I mentioned earlier, I am no longer a virgin in the technical sense,” Lorne said calmly. “But a virgin is not necessary to slaying a dragon. Virgins do make good bait, it’s true, but the answer to slaying a dragon is a legendary sword.”

“Like Excalibur or Clarent or Balmung?” Sam asked.

“Or Kusanagi-no-tsurugi or the Sword of St Peter that St George used to slay the dragon or Totsuka-no-tsurugi,” Lorne continued. “Europe doesn’t have the market on dragon-slaying swords, you know.”

John blinked. “I’m sorry, did you say _Kusanagi_ -no-tsurugi?”

“Miko, does your family have a legendary sword in its possession?” Vala asked. “Because that’s the sort of thing a girl tells her best friend.”

“No, we don’t have any legendary swords,” Miko said.

“How do we find this dragon?” Dean asked. “Since we no longer have convenient virgin-bait.”

“With rice and good sake,” Miko said, “the dragon will come.”

“What constitutes good sake?” Lorne asked.

Miko hummed thoughtfully. “Ask my sister.”

“Will do. In the meantime, John, let Vala take microburst site one,” Lorne said.

“Why?” John and Vala asked at the same time.

“Because you need to go pick up a sword.”  


*

This hunt felt more like espionage work than any military operation John had ever been on, where he’d had on his uniform and the power of his military affiliation to get things done. Now he was running around Japantown, taking readings and sending them off to Rodney and pretending he was playing some kind of fancy VR version of World of Warcraft. And then he had to go into a cake shop and speak a code phrase to the tiny elderly man behind the counter, let a pair of creepy twin girls pat him down (the way they dismissed his sidearm and knife and spare knife made John very uneasy), and stand in the dark in a back room until a tiny elderly woman brought him a sword in an iron sheath. A lot of seriously invasive touching occurred while the elderly woman put a sword belt on him and affixed the sword to it, and then John was shoved into the alley behind the bakery, blinking in the bright autumn sunlight.

“I got the sword,” John told Lorne, tapping on his bluetooth earpiece. “Your friends are very...handsy.”

“All right. Rodney, Miko, what’s the deal on the dragon? Do we have a location? Do we have bait?”

“I’ve set the wine and sake at a local shrine,” Miko said. “Now all we can do is wait.”

“The rest of you,” Rodney said, “can send me your data on the microburst sites.”

“Done,” Sam said. Vala and Dean chimed in with similar affirmations. Lorne gave them coordinates on Miko’s location at the shrine, told them to stick close to her to give her back-up when the dragon showed.

None of them were close when the dragon appeared to Miko. She started speaking in Japanese, which John only half-understood, but he could hear snatches of the man who was speaking to her.

“Miko, is that him?” Rodney demanded.

She didn’t answer, still speaking to someone else.

“Converge on Miko’s position, now,” Rodney ordered, and John moved.

He arrived at the shrine just in time to see Miko walking away, hand-in-hand with a tall, slender man with bright red hair. They crossed the street, headed into a fancy tea house. And John gave chase.  


*

“Miko!” Dean cried, and he crashed into John’s back.

Sam managed to stop himself before he sent all of them crashing to the floor.

“It’s all right,” Miko said again, but not to any of her teammates.

The man in her arms, still smiling, closed his eyes, and outside the window, the sun went down.  


*

Back at Yuki’s apartment, Miko and Vala huddled on the couch, drinking green tea and hugging each other. According to Miko, the dragon, who’d simply gone by Ryu, was sick, was dying, and his magic was out of control, and he needed help. He needed someone to end him. He’d given Miko the bamboo knife she used to take his life. And now it was done.

While Yuki was making a gratitude dinner, Lorne was off visiting his family. Sam was making an entry in his hunting journal, writing with painstaking care. He left a space in his journal for Lorne to include a sketch of the dragon. Dean was sitting beside John, wolfing down gourmet sushi, and speculating on when Lorne might have lost his virginity, and how, and with whom. At first Sam tried to shut him down, but eventually he sighed and gave up.

Rodney, who was running an analysis of the data they’d picked up at the microburst sites (trying to isolate the frequencies and residual energy signatures of dragon magic), finally said, “Look, Captain Winchester, if Lorne chooses to dispatch with his virginity in the service of his job, that’s his choice. How and when with whom he does so is none of your business, or anyone else’s.”

“C’mon, Sam,” Dean prodded. “Think it was Miko, or Vala?”

“Could’ve been John,” Sam said.

John said, without missing a beat, “I do like blue eyes.” He glance at Sam and grinned.

Sam grinned back.

“Lorne only has one blue eye,” Dean said automatically, and then he looked up, eyes wide.

“Relax,” John said, “I’m not that easy. Lorne hasn’t even bought me dinner yet.”

Dean’s jaw worked, but no words came out.

After supper, Yuki and Miko said their farewells, and everyone climbed back onto the bus. Sam had just settled into the driver’s seat when Lorne arrived. His eye patch was gone; he had a brand new glass eye that looked just as uncannily real as the last one. And though he was wearing the same gray suit as before, his bowtie was bright with color.

“Ready to go?” he asked, smiling.

“Step on it,” Miko said, and the bus lurched away from the pavement.

John sank down on the couch beside Rodney who, for once, wasn’t clacking away on his laptop. He had headphones on, was drumming his fingers on one knee while he listened to music. John peeked at the screen on Rodney’s iPod. He was listening to Rachmaninoff.

Rodney was staring off into the distance, distracted.

John watched Rodney’s hands move and realized he was practising. Playing. For a moment, John debated whether or not he should talk to Rodney, ask him about what he’d learned from the readings from the microburst sites. But for once Rodney wasn’t working, so John stood up, went back to one of the middle bunks to try to sleep.

He closed his eyes against the darkness and knew when he opened them again, the sun would be up.


End file.
